


A Nocturne in Minor Keys

by ChecktheHolonet



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, I Just Want Your Extra Time and Your...Kiss., Reylo - Freeform, Tragic Romance, absence makes the heart grow fonder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-25 23:33:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9851981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChecktheHolonet/pseuds/ChecktheHolonet
Summary: It is achingly, devastatingly familiar, this tragic waltz of theirs: two steps forward, one step back.





	

The knock comes as midnight passes, a sound so soft it is barely audible yet unmistakably insistent, riddled with steadfast intent.  She can feel it echo through her body like ripples on a pond, balance disturbed by impact’s force. _Here_ , she thinks, _he’s here_.

He'd slipped through Resistance checkpoints, cloaked his presence like a wraith to haunt her doorstep while she slept. For months, he'd yielded to the siren’s call, isolation's dagger chipping slowly at his sanity as he'd cried out to her through the Force. For three long, impenetrable seconds, Rey weighs her decision, scarcely able to draw a breath. The noise comes again, more distinct, precise tempo matching the racing beat of her heart.

It takes five swift steps to reach the door, half a second to throw on the light, and yet…her hand hesitates on the access panel. She knows who waits on the other side, could feel his approach like an incoming storm, heavy clouds heralding thunder’s cry. It is like this every time, the pregnant pause before the surrender…like sizing up the devil before inviting him inside. _Don’t,_ she tells herself.  _Not this time._

The knock comes again.

Kylo Ren is not a patient man.

Through the door, she calls, "one moment," then stands.  Rey catches her reflection in the glass, notices not for the first time the heavy circles that rim her eyes, the damning downturn of her mouth.  She is so, so tired. Three months of training, even more of fighting a battle that seemingly could not be won. So many losses. So much regret. And still, like always, he came to her. Unbidden. Unannounced. Defying Snoke. Hux. Years of programming, of First Order loyalty.

He’d never said why. Not once.

 _You don’t have to do this_ , she reasons with herself. Her eyes flit to the comm on nearby table. It would be so easy, to call Finn. Poe. Luke. They’d be here before he’d have a chance to evade, a mighty coup for the still struggling Resistance.

The next knock nearly shatters the doorframe. As though he’d sensed her duplicity. Her imagined betrayal.

 _Last chance_ , she thinks, the comm inches from her grasp.

_No._

Her body betrays her, and the door slides open.

He stands on the other side, same as always, shadowed eyes locked on hers, daring her to look away.  The midnight air is fragrant with moisture, the rain’s gentle whisper speaking of memories long gone.

“You’re here,” he says. It sounds more like accusation than statement.  She shrugs, schooled expression blasé, fingers still curled around the handle of the door.  “I intercepted a holo from…Poe,” he stops, as though the name tastes foul. He does not apologize for his brazen act of espionage. “He indicated you’d left. Returned to…” he trails off. Does not continue.

 _My uncle_ , the unspoken words hang in the air.

Rey traces ground with the ball of her foot. Leaning her weight against the doorjamb, she forces herself not to speak. 

Silence stretches between them, a delicate silver thread, until, at last, he pleads, “let me come in.” Earnest. Eager. All pretense at bravado dissipated into fog. Words weighted with the Force. Persuasive, always persuasive; begging for one more scrap for his pile of tattered hopes. Before she speaks, he whispers in a tone heavy with quiet desperation, “please, sweetheart.” The endearment makes her blush. “Don’t make me beg.”

It is achingly, devastatingly familiar, this tragic waltz of theirs: two steps forward, one step back.

 _Don’t make me beg._ (Invite me in.)  

I can’t do this. ( _I don’t want to stop.)_

She turns and disappears into her darkened quarters without a word.  Behind her, the door gapes; an open mouth. He follows with heavy steps against the wooden floor, a gallows march, loud and hollow. She hears him shrugging off his cloak, toeing off his boots. Seeking comfort; shedding his world’s trappings to disappear in hers.  

She can feel his gaze against her back like the pass of a hand. Bowing her head, she wraps her arms tightly around herself.  The feeble gesture offers not even the slightest protection against what she knows is coming, and yet she does it anyway, taking solace in the familiar.

From across the room, he watches her, sees her shoulders round inward, hears her heavy intake of breath as her head slowly bows.  On autopilot, he walks forward, placing warm, calloused hands against the soft skin where the hem of her threadbare tunic doesn’t quite meet her waistband.  She flinches.  It ricochets through him like shrapnel.

“I’m...sorry,” he starts, a bare whisper. She lifts a slender hand over her shoulder to frame his face, her fingers cool and soft where they press against his lips.

“Don’t,” she says.  It is more defeat than defiance.  He leans forward, pressing his heavy frame all along her back, as if he tries hard enough, he can disappear inside.  Gently, he urges her to turn, guides her to his chest. She shudders in response, turning her face to his shoulder.  When she pulls away, her cheeks are wet.

When he was younger, his father taught him never to approach a wounded animal unless he intended to kill it. _“When someone is cornered, kid,”_ he’d said quietly, just before pulling the trigger on a swiftly-dying deer, _“they’re at their most dangerous. They’ll try to run, and if that won’t work, they’ll fight.”_

Accordingly, he waits in silence, taking a few slow steps backward until he sinks down into her threadbare couch.  His fingers itch with sense-memory as they run across the nubby surface.  His mind’s-eye is cruel, providing image after image of them on this very couch, months ago, stolen moments when the base had emptied and he’d slipped through her door after dark. If he closes his eyes, it’s all there, clear and pristine as a stop-motion photograph: her head thrown back in helpless ecstasy, his hands slaking their endless desire with palmfuls of her smooth, supple breasts. Their lips, fused as greedy tongues parried and played. The memory makes him blush, makes his pulse pound in a way that is not unlike what he feels in battle, equally intense, equally addictive.  It takes everything in him to stay put, to watch as she paces slowly, back and forth, back and forth.

“Why did you come, Kylo?” she says finally.  “You cannot imagine that Luke will not sense your presence.” Her words explode like blaster bolts in the silence; too quick for him to form an exit strategy.

“I wanted to see you.”  He knows without meeting her eyes that it sounds like an excuse, like a pathetic plextech flower, cheap and artificial.

“You’ve seen me,” she snaps. Her resolve quickly falters.  She repeats herself but the fight has drained from her voice.  “You’ve seen me,” she chokes, like the last gasp of a dying deer, “now go.”

He swore to himself once that he would give her anything she wanted, anything in the galaxy…and yet, he cannot grant her this, his body immobile, his fingers folded over the crown of his head, a prisoner awaiting execution.

He says nothing, imploring her with eyes steeped in longing.

“Please,” she whispers, her words tremulous, reedy.  “You can’t be here.”

He stands then, ignoring every warning he’s ever heard, his father’s long-ago words cast aside to dust.  

“But I am,” he says gently.  “I am.”  Carefully, as not to startle her, he curls his hand around the smooth slope of her neck.  His thumb brushes gently over her cheek, the faintest trace of tears still palpable.

“You told me…you said,” she starts, mounting one last offense.  He circumvents it easily.

“I know what I said.  I didn’t mean it.”

When she stares at him, his heart cracks just a little at the disbelief in her eyes, as though she knows she’s about to accept a cup of the sweetest poison and drain it dry.

This time, the word comes from him: _please._

He can see the moment she accepts her fate, the instant she surrenders.  It is a small, sick triumph, tempered with loss.  There are no winners in this unending roulette of time wasted, hearts broken, damage wrought. He takes the opportunity as a gift, gently drawing her forward, cradling her close.

She braces herself, but the impact still knocks the breath from her lungs, like drowning in a sea of fire.  When his arms close firmly around her back, hands knitted at her spine, she ducks her head, allowing her face to rest against his throat.  Her breath drifts through the fabric of his robes, spreading heat like a bruise.  His breathing catches.

“I missed you,” he murmurs, heartfelt confession laid bare. She wants so badly to believe him.  Instead, she focuses on the pulse of his heart, strong and slow, conditioned by the Order for maximum efficiency.  A weapon turned weakness, so easily manipulated. Corrupted. Destroyed when he was too young to know what’d he’d lost. Trained to be ignored until the screaming need inside him drowned out all but the sound of her name. A perfect, proud soldier, smashed to ruins with the force of her smile. For every beat his pounds, her heart flutters twice. When her fingers curl above his sternum, tracing over the thin scars that litter his skin, she feels more adrift than ever. He takes her hand in his, bringing her wrist to his lips. Kisses her pulse once. Twice. Bathing the skin with his mouth, his tongue. She trembles, desire’s throb unbearably sweet.

They stand, cocooned in silence, fingers tangled, sharing breath. He can’t tell if he’s leaning down or she’s stretching up, but when their lips meet, it ceases to be relevant.  Their mouths seal like an unspoken promise, their fingers soon following, hands grabbing at clothing, at skin.  She feels his tongue slide against the seam of her mouth, seeking entrance. When she resists at first, he nips her softly, a stinging rebuke.  Her startled gasp is the opening he needs. When he steals inside her mouth, a strangled, desperate sound rumbles through his chest.

He’s heard tales of being burned alive, of nerve endings so overloaded they suddenly burst, so intense is the agony, only to be replaced by euphoria. _Force lightning,_ sudden and cataclysmic. He knows, immediately, that he must be aflame, that any minute he’ll be reduced to flesh and ash and horrible, glorious longing, but he also knows, unequivocally, that he simply _does not care_.

“Rey,” he chokes, then latches his mouth on the curve of her jaw, the tender spot below her chin, the smooth rise of her collarbone.  His mind is a shambles, all _closerhighermorenowfaster._  He prides himself on discipline, on control.  He knows now that chaos, that abandon, tastes infinitely sweeter.

She hears his voice through desire’s misty haze, like early-morning flying through fog.  Her name on his lips, reverent, adoring. His mouth dusts over her skin like fragments of a star, sure hands staking claim against the rise of her breasts, the flare of her hips.  She knows, logically, that she should resist…that she should find a way to silence the myriad shrieking, hysterical voices in her head. Yet, the closer she moves to him, the harder she presses, the quieter they become.

It happens like it always does, this familiar, tragic dance…a nocturne meant for minor keys, a sad waltz at once beautiful and desperate.  In the end, it is about balance…light and dark, loss and renewal, hope and tragedy.  She lets him spin her closer, lead her to the song’s inevitable close.

The easiest way to bring two people together, Rey thinks, is to force them to remain apart.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as always, for your comments, kudos, and time spent reading. I truly appreciate it.
> 
> Find me on tumblr: @checktheholonet


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